Academy’s Definition: the ground, dried bones from an animal carcass that is rich in minerals such as phosphorous, calcium, sulfur, magnesium, manganese, potassium, sodium, and many others. May contain negligible bits of meat, sinew, and other tissues that are unavoidable during good manufacturing practices.

How It’s Used in Dog Food: many manufacturers will add bone meal to provide a cost-effective, natural, mineral source for their diets. These will come packaged as bone “meal” which has already been desiccated (typically from heat or steam), and ground into a fine powder.

Bone meal can be found in a range of diets (including low-, mid-, and high-grade foods), and should not be confused with a “low quality” ingredient. That being said, a competing, and often higher-priced, substitute for bone meal is clay, as it contains a wider variety of minerals.

Frequently Asked: Is Bone Meal Safe? Bone meal is a wonderful addition to the diet, as long as it is handled mindfully. In a bag of dog food (read: in an industrial setting), the final product is tested for overall mineral content to ensure that levels of calcium and phosphorous are balanced and within safe levels.

Homemade bone meal, however, can easily become a dangerous ingredient. Individuals lack the necessary equipment to measure mineral content (unless you have a calorimeter, and spectrometer laying around), and the levels of calcium and phosphorus can become imbalanced. This may lead to a number of osteo- (bone) and renal- (kidney) issues. For this reason, the Academy does not recommend making home-made bone meal.